Have you downloaded the Nighttime by the river pattern yet? It’s still on sale until tonight at midnight!
A bit about colors before we start.
As I showed last week, I’m using this black and white bundle from Michael Miller. It’s a cute bundle with a few cat prints too! For fun I added a solid color too, here I added a pale yellow, I often pick black, white and yellow, don’t know why, but I like it.
Now my bundle is a bit tricky as white and black are SO opposing and here with stripes they are both light and dark. You want to pick a fabric bundle that goes together, low contrast is perfectly fine! we’re shuffling the fabrics around in the blocks.
I sorted my pile in dark, light, dark, light, which is not the BEST idea, but you want to shuffle your fabrics around so that two fabrics don’t touch that are too close in value, but you also have to think about the fabric being 2 or 3 away. With my whites and blacks being 2 away from each other it just creates a different look in the blocks, but it will be ok. and my yellow I counted as a light, so I removed on FQ from the bundle.
If you have directional fabrics like this, then just pay attention to the cutting, with rotary cutting follow the chart but cut the angle of the triangles in the opposite direction!! (I believe I wrote that in the pattern)
For Accuquilt cutting, the blocks are made with the 6″ and 12″ QUBE set.
From the 6″ qube set it’s shape #1, 2,4,5
From the 12″ set it’s shapes #4 and 5 (#5 is also shape #3 in the 6″ set) so you can always just rotary cut the large QSTs and use the 6″ set for the rest. (Or maybe use the large QST shape on the 3″ x 6″ flying geese die, but I haven’t tested how it would fit)
I don’t want to give too much away as far as cutting, because you’re supposed to buy the pattern 😉
For rotary cutting follow the chart in the pattern and you do that with Accuquilt dies too somewhat.
There’s NOT MUCH waste from either way of cutting so cut out on FQ first and get a feel for how you will cut it and then cut the rest.
Here’s a note with Accuquilt dies.
With the large HSTs (#5 from the 12″ set or #3 from the 6″ set) I fan folded the FQ twice, then doubled that up, I have the GO big, so I can cut 8 layers at a time, but you can cut 4 layers too if that’s easier, so on the 18″ side of the FQ fold it twice so it becomes 4 1/2″ or so and lay on the die and cut out the 16 HSTs. (with the folds it keeps the cutting correct on directional fabrics)
Now the FQ is more manageable, and at this point you can layer more FQs on top of each other to cut the rest, I then started with the biggest shape which is #4 from the 12″ QUBE set and cut out one set of 4, then continue with the other shapes and use the biggest shapes first, so #5 and #2 are smaller shapes and can be cut in sections, just remember to fold the fabrics on #5 if you have directional fabrics, so the fabric faces the right way.
I think I did the #4 from the 6″ QUBE set next and then the center square #1 die and lastly #2 and #5
as you can see I didn’t have much leftover fabric left so pay attention when cutting 🙂 You can sort of follow the cutting chart in the pattern for cutting the pieces.
As you cut the pieces, lay them out in the block layout, this way you check directions of the fabrics and it keeps you on track too! And then layer the rest of them on top in order.
Here’s my pile of 20 fabrics!
Now here comes the fun part!
From the outer star points (triangles) and the corner triangles, take one fabric and move them to the bottom (now I have the white with black dots showing)
Then from the inner star points, take 2 fabrics and move to the back, (that’s now black with tiny white dots)
and lastly take 3 fabrics from the center square and move to the back! (white floral)
Do you see how the inner star is black and the background is black also, that’s because I only did the dark,white,dark, white shuffling around, if you have a FQ bundle that has more fabrics, it will look nicer- this is just a different look and it’s ok, but you want more variety.
Next week we’ll star sewing the pieces together, you can do it now if you want to get a head start or keep the piles like this, take a picture with your phone and put the piles away until next week and then you can look at the picture and know how to put them back in order.